But baby...

Watching Troy (the somewhat expurgated version) with the kids today, I'm reminded of why I love their age range so very, very much. First off there's Sean Bean's Odysseus monologue at the beginning, where I remind the boys of a Troy mock-summary that starts with "If there's one thing we Greek heroes hope, it's that you remember us."

Daniel instantly smiles and delivers the audience line: "Hey, it's Boromir! Hi, Boromir!"

So I deliver the Bean line: "That's... not what I meant."

Then we're watching, and there's fake cousins, and Our Lady of Soundtrack Sorrow, and sunlight and sand and swords and sex and fast forwards through naked parts, and then we get to the part where Paris and Helen are talking about running away, and unprompted by me Daniel gets a little twinkle and bursts out laughing right on cue:



The Mock Summary of Troy With The 'But Baby' Line

The Mock Summary of Troy With The Line About Boromir

Say It Loud, I'm Buoyant And Proud

Zoo tempts gay penguins to go straight

A German zoo has imported four female penguins from Sweden in an effort to tempt its gay penguins to go straight.



The four Swedish females were dispatched to the Bremerhaven Zoo in Bremen after it was found that three of the zoo's five penguin pairs were homosexual.

Keepers at the zoo ordered DNA tests to be carried out on the penguins after they had been mating for years without producing any chicks.

It was only then they realised that six of the birds were living in homosexual partnerships.

Director Heike Kueck said that the zoo hoped to see some baby penguins in the coming months.

She said that the birds had been mating for years and one couple even adopted a stone that they protected like an egg.

Kueck said that the project has the support of the European Endangered Species Programme because the penguins, which are native to South America, are an endangered species.

A biologist will be on hand to monitor the experiment.

But introducing the Bremerhaven penguins to their new Swedish friends may not be as successful as hoped after earlier experiments revealed great difficulties in separating homosexual couples.

In case they show no interest, the zoo has also flown in two new male penguins "so that the ladies don't miss out altogether", Kueck added.

No, you can't make this stuff up.

***

OK, and see, I can't stop laughing. Because I keep remembering a friend of mine who had on her fridge a small article from some biology magazine, where scientists had made an amazing discovery. Having discovered same-sex behaviour in just about every creature on the planet, many people had wondered (and I'm thinking this must have come up in conversation more than once in Australia and New Zealand) why, of all god's creatures, did female sheep seem to have no attraction whatsoever to their own kind? Male rats wrestle in manly, ratty ways, manfully trying to top each other. In goose flocks, male couples are highly prized because they're two fighting geese for the price of one. Female doves often set up little lovey-dovey nests. But female sheep never ever say I love ewe and mean it.

Then they figured out why: when female sheep are aroused, they signal it by standing very still, such that the ram they're dying for can more easily show his love. So for all they knew, the scientists realized, lesbianism may be absolutely rampant [::snicker::] among sheep, and nobody will ever know. Not even the sheep themselves, who stand more and more still, quivering in anticipation, gazing longingly at one another, murmuring soft bleats of love, Are you ready? Oh, yes, baby, I'm ready, I'm so ready for you... want you so ba-a-ad... I'm soo ready... so, very, very... um... baby? Not falling asleep on me, are you? Oh wait, no that's me, sorry, drifted off there a little. Like I was saying, any time, baby, oh I want you so, so baad... so bad... sso... ::bleaty-snore::

And I wonder when it will be discovered that male sheep, alone of the animal kingdom, harbour no lesbian fantasies at all. Dolly & her sisters will never turn into the sheep equivalent of the Doublement Twins.